


maybe we should kiss or something

by lilypottersghost



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, dropship, series of One-shots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilypottersghost/pseuds/lilypottersghost
Summary: A collection of prompts, all Bellarke and all at least a little fluffy.3. Even though she was nearly dead on her feet, a smile invaded her face when she came to the meadow. Her people were running and laughing, tackling each other and throwing snowballs. Joy bubbled like warmth in her chest.“Clarke, move!” Bellamy called out, and it was her only warning before a snowball hit her arm.“Bellamy!” she cried indignantly.He ran up to her, kissing her lips in apology. “You were in my line of fire.”[ Clarke reflects on her life with Bellamy and finds that she's happier than she ever thought possible. ]
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 31
Kudos: 220





	1. i am easy to find | (bed-sharing)

**Author's Note:**

> all of these prompts are being filled for people who have participated in my "donate for a fic" thing, where i write oneshots for people who send me proof that they donated or signed five petitions in support of the black lives matter movement. submissions are currently closed until i write all of the requests i've received, but they may reopen at some point in the future.
> 
> title of the collection is from "alaska" by BANKS.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this oneshot is for the lovely @yikebell (@yikegriff on twitter!) who requested hurt/comfort + sharing a bed. the title of this is the title of an album and song by the national.
> 
> post-season 2. season 3? we don't know her.

At first he doesn’t know that it’s Clarke. The moonlight illuminates dark red hair instead of blond; her head is down, ratty locks hanging like a curtain over her face. She’s far away, just within sight of the gate. He peers through the viewfinder on his gun to get a closer look as she approaches. There is something familiar in the slope of her nose, in the glimpses that he catches of her frown as she walks—no— _limps_. 

“Who are you?” barks one of the guards stationed with Miller at the gate.

Bellamy watches as the girl’s hands go up. She raises her chin. It knocks the breath out of him, seeing her face for the first time in four months. She’s wincing in pain. Her hands shake and are covered in something red.

“Stand down!” Bellamy shouts from his post on the wall, even though he’s not in any position to do so on this shift. No one listens.

Miller, who is the commanding officer tonight, yells, “Seriously, Bellamy?”

“Give the order, Miller! It’s Clarke.”

Shock writing over his expression, Miller checks his own viewfinder. Bellamy watches as his eyes widen in recognition. “Stand down! We’re letting her in!”

The other guards on duty lower their weapons while Bellamy abandons his post, climbing down the ladder and landing on the ground as Miller and Harper open the gate.

“Bellamy, go back to your post,” Miller orders, but Bellamy ignores him and runs through the open gate. “Bellamy, get back here!”

He can deal with Miller reporting him to Kane. He’s focused, tunnel-visioned, on Clarke, who is stumbling as she walks. Her hands are down now, and one is clutching her side.

“Get medical!” Bellamy calls back to Miller and the others.

“Bellamy,” Clarke says as he reaches her.

This time when she stumbles, he catches her. “What happened?”

She’s breathing heavily, not meeting his eyes. Her voice is full of urgency when she says, clutching at his jacket. “You are all in danger.”

“I don’t care,” Bellamy says. He covers the hand that’s on her abdomen with his own. His fingers come away slippery with blood. “I need to know what happened to you.”

“An arrow. It—” Her knees buckle under her. He eases her to the ground. “It came out of nowhere.”

“I need a medic!” he shouts again, in case they didn’t hear before.

“It came out of nowhere,” she says again, quieter this time, the look in her eyes becoming faraway, lost. 

“I know. We’re getting you help, Clarke.” He’s cradling her in his arms, vaguely remembering something she once said about keeping the head above the wound.

Her eyelids flutter, nearly shutting.

He lightly taps her cheek. “Stay awake for me, okay?” he pleads. “Your mom is coming.”

Clarke smiles up at him, and that scares him more than anything. He glances over his shoulder and sees a distant outline of Abby emerging with a stretcher from the infirmary, Harper with her.

“She’s coming, Clarke, I can see her.”

She doesn’t seem to be listening to him. She’s looking up at his face, still smiling. “It’s good to see you, Bellamy.”

“It’s good to see you, too. Stay awake.”

She doesn’t.

And then Abby and Harper are there, helping Bellamy hoist her onto the stretcher, and his hands are bloodier than he thought once he isn’t holding her.

“What happened?” Abby asks him, her face eerily calm as she runs along with him and Harper as they walk as fast as they can with the stretcher between them.

“She said it’s an arrow wound.”

“Is the arrow still in there?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t even realize that he’s hyperventilating until they’re in the infirmary and Miller is there, pushing him back from where they’re transferring Clarke to a table, telling him to breathe.

“You have the rest of the night off,” Miller says. Bellamy cranes his neck to see Clarke, but Jackson pulls the curtain shut. “You need to give them some time, though.”

“Come on, Bellamy,” Harper says. “Let’s sit.”

Bellamy nods, in a daze, as he follows her and collapses into one of the few chairs in the corner that serves as a waiting room.

Harper hands him a wet cloth, and he uses it to clean Clarke's blood from his hands.

He hears them working on Clarke, hears them talking about blood pressure and how to stop the bleeding and whether or not there’s organ damage. He rests his forehead on his hands, staring at the floor. He wants to leave, so that he doesn’t have to be here. He needs to be here.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when Raven barges in.

“She’s back?”

Bellamy clears his throat. “Yeah. She has an arrow in her, though.”

“Shit.”

Harper shakes her head. “We should have sent out more search parties as soon as Indra told us that the grounders wanted to kill her.”

“Well, we didn’t,” Bellamy mutters. Frustration burns in his stomach as he recalls how he fought with Kane about it, to no avail. _It's apparent that Clarke does not want to be found, Bellamy_ , Kane said. _If we can't find her, the grounders won't either_.

But they _did_. They found her and they hurt her.

“Hey.” He feels Raven’s hand on his shoulder. “We have her now.”

They sit for about a half-hour longer, mostly silent.

Finally, the curtain opens. Abby emerges. Bellamy stands up.

“She’s stable,” she says. He’s looking over her shoulder, at Clarke’s still form on the bed. “There wasn’t as much internal damage as I’d feared,” Abby continues. “I would guess that she passed out partially due to exhaustion.”

“Is that good?” Raven asks.

Abby nods. “Yes. It means that she hadn’t lost too much blood.” Then she reaches toward a table behind her. “There’s something else.” She’s holding an arrowhead in her hand. “I want Lincoln to look at this in the morning. He might be able to tell us what clan tried to kill her.”

Bellamy crosses his arms. “I don’t know if we can wait until morning.”

“Why?”

“Clarke said that we’re all in danger. I think whoever shot her might be following her.”

Abby’s eyes widen. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

He pauses. How does he say that he was overwhelmed without sounding incompetent? “Uh—I don’t know, she was—”

She waves him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get Kane. We need to send a team out tonight. Get Lincoln and we’ll meet in the council chamber. Go.”

Bellamy is reluctant to leave Clarke, but for once, he obeys.

Besides, he wants to kill the person who did this to her.

*

Her dreams are the same as always—not dark but blinding white.

It’s the quarantine ward. She’s banging on the walls, begging someone to let her out. But she knows that she’ll never be let out; everyone who could open the door is dead, and she killed them. She does what she did when she first woke up in the sterile room months ago and breaks the window. Like always in this dream, she cuts her arm on the shattered glass of the window she reaches through to turn the doorknob.

She emerges into the hallway, and her knees go weak at what she finds.

Instead of the floor, she’s standing on dead bodies. Most of them are covered in welts caused by radiation, but others are charred skeletons like the grounders who perished in the ring of fire. Others are still alive, but with limbs missing like the woman she saw in the woods after the missile hit Ton DC.

Something reaches up and grabs her leg.

It’s Maya.

Clarke startles awake and sees blinding white. Part of her was expecting to see Bellamy’s face above her; it was the last thing she was looking at when the world flickered and then faded to black. She remembers that even though she was scared, she felt safe, relieved to be with him.

But when she looks around her, he isn’t here. There is only Jackson in the corner, who hasn’t noticed that she’s awake.

“Where’s Bellamy?” she asks him, her words coming quietly out of her dry throat.

Jackson looks up from whatever paperwork he was examining. “You’re awake,” he says dumbly.

“Where’s Bellamy?” she repeats.

He comes over to her bed and tries to check her vitals, but she shakes him off.

“I’m fine.”

“Bellamy is out. He’ll be back soon, hopefully.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes. “Out?”

“Your mom told me not to upset you. You should wait—”

Her hand goes to the bandage around her abdomen. She looks around the room but doesn’t see it. The arrowhead.

“He went to look for the attacker, didn’t he?”

Jackson nods. “With Lincoln and a few others. He said that you said we were in danger.”

Clarke sighs. “Not because of the attacker.”

“What do you mean?”

“The grounders want to kill me. Take my power. They’re making it into a competition.” She tries to sit up, ignoring Jackson’s pleas for her to stay still. “The Ice Queen sent a spy after me, to watch me and wait for a good moment to catch me. But she sent a shitty spy. One day I saw her and tried to shoot her myself. This,” she gestures to her wound, “was self-defense on her part.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the spy isn’t a threat. But she knows I’m here now, and she’s gonna run and tell the Ice Queen to gather an army strong enough to march on Arkadia. We’ll be at war.”

Jackson just stands there, speechless. Clarke rolls her eyes. “Just tell my mother to call the team back. We need to prepare for war in a matter of days.”

Clarke doesn’t wait to find out if her mother gets the message out; she drifts off.

Hours later, she wakes again and Abby is there.

“Bellamy?” Clarke asks.

Her mother’s gaze darkens, causing Clarke’s stomach to drop.

“We haven’t been able to get in touch with them,” Abby says. “We’re not sure why.”

Tears spring to her eyes.

“Clarke, more than likely, they’re fine. You said it was just one spy after you, right?”

“As far as I know.”

“Then let’s not worry about them yet, okay? They’ve only been gone a few hours.”

Clarke nods, trying to contain her emotions. “I think I need to be alone.”

For an hour, she lays awake, her worried thoughts flying around her head and getting tangled up in each other, but eventually, she has no choice but to give in to her exhaustion.

Her nightmares are a hollow vein, blue and sucking the blood from her body. Her nightmares turn into flowery dreams and then twist themselves back into horrible configurations, taking everything good and loved from her over and over again. Her father, Finn, Wells. Then it’s new deaths, ones that she hasn’t lived yet but fears that she might one day. And then she’s back in time, back in her memories, in her guilt.

She’s wading in a pool of blood in the belly of the mountain again, covering her ears to shield herself from the screams of all those she’s killed, when she’s shaken awake.

“Clarke.” It’s Bellamy’s voice.

She wonders for a second if she’s still dreaming, if he’s about to be taken away from her by fate’s cruel hand.

But then she opens her eyes, and she’s in the infirmary still, looking up at the ceiling, then looking at Bellamy.

She feels a smile take over her face. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling back. He’s sitting in the chair beside her bed, impossibly close and too far away from her at the same time. “Were you having a bad dream?”

“Yeah.” She tries to sit up a little so she can see him better.

“Clarke, you shouldn’t—here, let me help.” He rearranges her pillows and helps her lean up against them so she’s closer to sitting.

She looks at him for a second, taking him in. He looks the same as he did the day she left him at the gate. “How was the mission?”

Bellamy takes her hand.

She feels relief flutter cautiously in her chest. This whole time, she thought that he would hate her when she finally returned.

“We killed the spy,” Bellamy says.

“How do you know it was her?”

She watches him swallow. “I knew her. In the mountain. I knew she was Azgeda.”

“Then you’ve bought us a few days. Maybe a week.” She squeezes his hand. “Thank you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. I knew it would put Arkadia in danger—”

“Clarke, don’t. You were hurt. I’m glad you came here. This way, we can protect you.”

“But now we’re at war.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “A week gives us enough time to negotiate. We’ll see what we can do to keep this from escalating.”

He still doesn’t get it. “They’re going to ask for me. The Ice Queen wants Wanheda’s power.”

“The Ice Queen can suck it.”

She laughs and knows that he means to cheer her up, but tears still form in her eyes as her laugh dies and she feels the guilt wash over her in a sudden and violent wave. “I should have let her have me. I should give myself up now.”

She watches Bellamy’s jaw clench as he uses his free hand to brush away a lock of hair from her face. “I will never let you do that,” he vows.

“Why not? You should be angry with me, Bellamy. You should hate me. I left you.” She remembers his words that day. _If you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you. You’re forgiven._ She hated him for weeks because of that. How dare he forgive her when she didn’t deserve to be forgiven? Who was he to absolve her of her crimes? She used to wish that he would hate her, so that she would get what she deserved.

He licks his lips, his eyes growing far away for a second. “I was angry with you, for a while. You said that you bear it so that we don’t have to, but we still bear it. I still struggled. And I worried about you. I was angry, because I wanted us to be able to bear it together. But I know why you left.”

She is quiet, not able to form the words that she wants to say. _I’m sorry_ , and _Thank you_ , and _I love you_ , are either not enough or not appropriate.

He nudges her arm and leans in closer, his elbows resting on the bed. “Anyway, it’s hard to stay mad at you when you’ve got an arrow in your stomach.”

Clarke smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I need to win an argument.”

He laughs. It hits her how deeply she missed him. Out in the woods, alone, she learned a lot about herself. She learned that she tends to run away from her problems, whether it’s a genocide or a panther. She learned that she can’t aim a bow and arrow quite like she can aim a gun, that she’s better at killing people than animals. And she learned that out of everyone she’d left in Arkadia, she missed Bellamy the most.

“I missed you, Clarke,” he says earnestly, as if he was reading her thoughts.

“I missed you, too.” _You have no idea_.

He looks down at their interlaced fingers. “I looked for you, you know. We sent out search parties for a month after we heard that they were calling you Wanheda, that some people wanted to kill you. I wanted to find you so badly, and we never did. But then you just, _walked_ up to the front gate.”

“I was never very far away,” Clarke admits. “I just needed to be alone, to think. You know, on the Ark, they put me in solitary for being noble. Down here, it makes no sense to me that I can murder three-hundred people and no one wants to lock me up.”

“We did it to save our people.”

She tenses at his choice of words. _We_. “Bellamy—”

“I told you that you don't have to do this alone. I already forgave you, but it's time that you forgive yourself.”

“I know,” Clarke admits. “I'm trying.”

Bellamy looks like he's going to say something, but then he yawns.

“You’re tired,” she points out, fondness swelling in her. “You need to rest, Bellamy.”

He shakes his head vehemently. “I’m fine.”

“You were on guard duty when I came here last night, and then you rushed onto a mission that could have gotten you killed. You need sleep.” The sun is low in the sky outside the window; he's been gone nearly all day.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he says.

Her heart hurts. She doesn’t deserve his concern.

But then he stands up, and lets go of her hand. Her chest feels tight with fear that he’s actually going to leave. Instead, he takes two steps and sits on the cot beside hers.

She knows she should argue with him; she knows that these hospital cots are uncomfortable and that he should sleep in his own bed, but she doesn’t. Her selfish, rotting heart wants him here.

“Thank you, Bellamy,” she says.

“For what?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. Everything.”

*

Bellamy’s nightmares are a darkened room with scorching hot water pouring down on him, his neck secured by an ice-cold ring of iron. His nightmares are all of his blood going to his head, Maya’s dead body calling out for mercy, the mangled skeletons of the children in their kindergarten classroom who didn’t even know what war was before it killed them, before _he_ killed them. His nightmares are memories piles on top of memories until they’re too heavy for him to bear, and he snaps under the weight.

He wakes with a start, disoriented.

The dimmed fluorescent lights of the nighttime infirmary, the cot under his body. It all comes to him slowly, like an old television flickering on. He looks over to his right, where he sees Clarke blue eyes staring back at him.

“Did I wake you?” he asks.

“No,” she assures him. “I kind of slept for too long, and now I’m awake.” She sits up, holding up a hand when he tries to get up to help her.

Sitting up fully now, she crosses her arms. It’s cold in the infirmary. “Were you having a nightmare?” she asks.

He nods, not seeing the point in denying it.

To his surprise, she stands up carefully and walks over to his bed. “Move over,” she says. Too stunned to question it, he does. He watches as she lies down next to him, on her side to face him.

“I’m sorry for leaving," she says, her voice quiet and trembling a little. "But we can bear it together, starting now.”

He feels a surge of affection for her, and relief that she’s finally home. He remembers the months he spent without her, hoping that she would come back, that she was still alive.

He wants to kiss her. He thinks it’s too soon; he doesn’t know how she feels.

Instead, he kisses her cheek, softer than she did at the gate four months ago, slower. He hears her breath catch in her throat. Her hand reaches up to touch his cheek, holding him in place, as she pulls back to meet his eyes.

That’s all it takes him to surge forward and kiss her lips, rougher than he intended, but he can’t help it. She’s alive, warm, pulling him closer to her until he’s balanced on his arms over her, just close enough to feel her body against his but not enough to hurt her.

They kiss until his lips feel raw, until they’re both gasping for breath, until the fire flares hot and then dies down again, until their mouths grow slow and lazy, mesmerizing and soft against each other like a lullabye.

He lets the fire die down, knowing that Clarke is too hurt to take it further, and that he is too exhausted. They end up lying curled together, their breaths now slower.

“We should talk about this,” Clarke says, always the pragmatist.

He buries his face in the crook of her neck. “Uh-huh.” 

“Bellamy,” she says, and he hears the smile in her voice.

He presses a light kiss to her neck. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Bellamy falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	2. please call me your baby | (fake dating)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clarke and bellamy have been leading the hundred together for six months when clarke learns that everyone in camp believes that they are together. when she tells bellamy and he suggests that they just go along with it, she has no idea what she's getting into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this oneshot is for the lovely pris (@wallflowerqueen on twitter) who requested fake dating! the title of this is from "lovesick" by banks.
> 
> post-season 1 (the ark never came down and mount weather never captured them)

The whispering starts about six months after they landed. Clarke first overhears it one cool April morning when she’s walking to the lake to bathe. There, by the rocks, sit Harper and Fox, washing clothes.

She’s about to run up to them and say hello when she hears Harper say her name. She isn’t proud that her first instinct is to hide behind a tree to listen, but that’s what she does.

“And then Bellamy and Clarke went off into his tent to scheme, like always,” she says, and Clarke recalls the incident. Harper came to them early this morning, as camp was just waking up, with a report from her night on watch. She’d seen a grounder in the woods, a grounder who seemed to be scoping out the camp, sizing it up.

Their careful truce with Trikru since the ring of fire was tentative. Lately, Clarke and Bellamy have been fearing that the grounders would break it after all and avenge their fallen warriors, but that’s not what Fox and Harper are discussing, Clarke quickly learns.

They’re talking about her and Bellamy.

“You really believe that they were just talking strategy in there?” Fox says in a teasing tone.

Clarke hears Harper scoff. “I just don’t have my head in the gutter like the rest of you.”

 _The rest of you?_ The _rest of them_ think this? All of them?

Feeling too awkward to approach them now, her head reeling, Clarke turns back toward camp. She can wash off later.

Bellamy’s out hunting for most of the day. Clarke spends it in the med tent, tending to a boy with a broken finger and a girl with a slight fever. After dinner she goes back to the lake to bathe and when she comes back to camp, the sun has set and Bellamy is back.

He’s standing in a small circle with Jasper and Lincoln, who were with him on the trip, and Miller, who has come to see what they brought home.

“Clarke!” Bellamy says, his face lighting up as she walks through the gates. Over the months, they’ve built a better wall of stone and wood. It’s more aesthetically pleasing and will be sturdier if they ever have to endure another attack. Clarke and Bellamy want to build cabins, but they also want to negotiate with the grounders so that they would be allowed to travel and find a better territory, one where they could have more farmland. For now they’re stuck in this awkward limbo, trying to make a home here while also trying to leave.

She walks over to Bellamy, who pulls her in for a brief, one-sided hug. She feels a flutter of something in her chest and tells herself that it’s only from her relief that they all came home safe. “You’ll never believe what Jasper shot today.”

He lifts a tarp below him to reveal a deer, an arrow still in its neck.

“Impressive,” Clarke says, nudging Jasper, who smiles wide.

Then Bellamy’s touching her arm, leaning in close. “Hey, can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” she says, but stops when he starts heading toward his tent.

He turns around. “What is it?”

“We can talk out here.”

He throws her an odd look. “Or we can just talk in my tent like we always do.”

Clarke is just being weird. She can’t stop thinking about what Harper and Fox were saying at the lake, about what everyone thinks she’s doing with Bellamy in his tent.

Admittedly, now that they’ve said it, she knows that she’s been naive; of course that is what they would think. Bellamy only brought girls into his tent for one reason back in the beginning, and now Clarke is in there all the time, and no one else is. Bellamy would say that it’s because he’s grown up, that he’s accepted his role as a leader of this camp and that he can’t be distracted, but to the hundred, the optics of it…

They think that he has given up his one night stands for Clarke, and now they think that Bellamy is _dating_ her.

Hell, she’s even spent the night in his tent a few times, when they’re up late talking and she drifts off. She should really stop doing that; look where it’s gotten her.

Pushing her worries aside, she follows him into his tent.

The tents they sleep in have been fortified to be more permanent, with real wooden floors and even some handmade furniture. “What was that about?” Bellamy asks, taking a seat at a little table by the door: _their_ little table. Strewn across it are all of the plans for their more permanent home when they have the chance to move, current plans for the greenhouse Monty is building, and the schedule for chores, watches, and hunting parties.

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s not important. What did you want to talk about?”

Bellamy gives her one last look that tells her that he knows she’s lying, then launches into a paranoid rant about how they need to prepare for an attack any day now because the hunting party spotted more grounder scouts in their territory. There wasn’t a confrontation; Bellamy moved the party along as though they hadn’t seen them, but it was only a matter of time.

“Woah,” Clarke says, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s take a moment to think about this, first. I can set up a meeting with Anya. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for the scouts that doesn’t mean war is on the horizon.”

“What else would they mean?”

She bites her lip. “I don’t know. But I do know that if Anya wanted to launch a surprise attack on us, she’d be less obvious about it.”

Bellamy slumps in his chair, leaning his head on the back of it to stare at the draped cloth ceiling of the tent. “Maybe they’re not Trikru.”

“All the more reason to talk to Anya. She swore that no clan would attack us, remember? She gave us her word.”

He scoffs. “I think you trust her more than I do.”

They debate organizing a meeting with Anya for a solid hour: whether or not to bring guns, where to meet, how to handle it if she does want war, and if she doesn’t, whether or not they should risk asking her again if they can move to a better territory.

When they seem to have explored every possible scenario, argued over every detail, they fall silent.

And Bellamy circles right back.

“So,” he says, standing up and stretching as he walks over to the chest where he keeps his change of clothes. “Why were you weird earlier?”

Clarke is momentarily distracted by his bare chest as he takes off the filthy shirt he’d gone hunting in and pulls on a clean blue henley.

“I—uh.” Her cheeks are warm, and she tells herself that it’s in reaction to his question and not momentarily seeing him shirtless. She doesn’t want to recount to him what she heard today, but they probably need to have this conversation if everyone already thinks it. “I overheard something that was said at the lake today.”

“Oh?” Bellamy plops down on his bed, sitting at the edge of the straw-stuffed mattress.

“I got the impression that…” How should she put this? “I think that a lot of the kids, if not most of them, think we’re together.”

He does the last thing she wanted or expected from him: he laughs. 

“ _That’s_ what this is about?”

Her cheeks flare hot. “Wait, you _knew_ about this?”

“Clarke, they’ve thought this for ages.”

“And you’ve never thought to bring it up with me? Or to correct them?”

“Well, it’s kind of nice for me. I like not having to reject people all the time; it’s awkward. And you must be relieved that Finn backed off, right?”

He’s right. Finn did back off. Clarke thought that maybe he’d finally moved on, but it was because he thought she was with Bellamy?

Clarke shakes her head, trying to wrap her mind around everything. “How long have you known about this?”

Bellamy shrugs, like it isn’t a big deal at all. “A few months?”

“A _few months_? And you just let them go on thinking it?”

“Well, yeah?” He runs a hand though his curls. “Like I said, it’s kind of convenient for us. Besides, what we are or are not to each other is none of their business. Whenever I thought about going out of my way to correct them, it just seemed pointless. They’ll think what they want to think.”

“So what, you just want to go along with it?”

He shrugs again. “I mean, that’s what I’ve been doing. Unless it makes you uncomfortable. But doing nothing just seems easier, given how good everything is right now.”

Clarke sighs, kind of seeing his point. It would be socially complicated to announce to the entire camp that they aren’t dating when it’s none of their business, anyway. If they found out that there was nothing between her and Bellamy, would Finn begin pursuing her again? Would the kids try to get her and Bellamy to get together? Would typical teenage drama ensue?

If Bellamy’s right, and they’ve thought this for months, then Clarke doesn’t want to mess anything up by telling them the truth. These past few months have been the best, most productive time that their camp has ever had.

She sits down beside Bellamy on the bed, having come to a decision. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll just ignore it, then.”

He smiles. “Great. If we don’t worry about it, everything will be fine.” 

They stay up for an hour longer talking about the grounder situation and whether or not it’s safe to plan a trip to a newly-discovered bunker for supplies.

“Maybe this one will have something interesting, like art,” Clarke muses.

“Or something useful, like more seeds for Monty’s farm.”

“Art _is_ useful. It reminds us who we are.” She thinks of her notebook under the mattress in her own tent, the number of pages that have Bellamy’s face, his hands.

He looks at her, smiling. “Fine, princess. If we find any art, we can take home _one_ piece.”

She raises an eyebrow. “And if we find books?” She thinks of how he told her once that he used to read before bed, of the stories he tells the kids around the campfire some nights.

“This is _if_ this bunker has anything other than the usual provisions.”

“Think positively, Bellamy,” Clarke says, getting up.

“This is me we’re talking about,” he jokes, watching her pull on her jacket.

“I believe in you,” she says, smiling. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

  
  


Clarke hopes that going along with everyone’s assumption that they are together won’t change anything, but that doesn’t hold true.

Because nothing is the same.

It starts the next morning in the dropship after their morning meeting with Monty and Raven. They’ve built a wooden wall to cover the entrance that features a normal door. When she opens it to leave for the med tent, Bellamy follows her out. He says he has to talk to her about something and walks her there. They do talk about the watch last night that proved to be uneventful, but then at the entrance to the med tent, Bellamy kisses her cheek goodbye.

That’s _new_. She hopes he doesn’t see her blush as she squeaks out a “See you later!” and ducks into the med tent.

She confronts him that night, in his tent. “What was that kiss about?”

He looks up from a map. “What?”

“You kissed my cheek this morning, after _you walked me to the med tent_.”

For a second, he looks genuinely regretful. “Sorry, should I not have done that?”

She’s flustered and she _hates_ it. “No! I mean, I don’t care that you did it. Just—why?”

He shrugs. “I thought we might try to sell the lie a little bit.”

“We’re not lying.”

“We’re lying by omission.”

She hates it when he’s right. “But why do we have to sell it if they already think that we’re together?”

“They’re in danger of finding out that we’re not if we keep it professional _all_ the time.”

She sees it in his eyes now. He’s playing with her. This is a game to him, a challenge. It’s only the barest flicker of glee on his face, but she knows his face better than most. Probably better than anyone.

Fine. Two can play, then.

After they go over everything they need to discuss for the night, which isn’t much, they’re still at the table. But when Bellamy takes off his shoes for bed, Clarke does too.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

She meets his eyes, feigning innocence. “Selling the lie.”

At first, Bellamy doesn’t change the game on her. He kisses her cheek in front of people every once in a while, and she sleeps in his tent, so that no one can spot her walking home at night.

She doesn’t know what she wants out of Bellamy, but she wants _something_. She wants it to be annoying for him, sharing his space with her, so she brings in a lot of her stuff. But she also wants what he got out of her; she wants him to be _flustered_. So she starts holding his hand in public. Still, his reactions are stony and unsatisfying.

The first few nights, she sleeps on the opposite side of the bed with all of her clothes on. But then on the fourth night, she starts taking her bra off before bed. Then on the fifth night, she scoots a little closer, and a little closer, until she can feel his breath on the back of her neck.

That morning, she gets her wish. She wakes with Bellamy’s arm around her and pretends to be asleep. This feels dangerous, out of bounds, but then she remembers how she feels whenever he kisses her cheek or holds her close around the others, and she doesn't care about violating the rules of their game. It's a stupid game. She can bend the rules if it makes him feel as helpless as he makes her feel.

It isn’t until a few minutes after he gets up that she opens her eyes and stretches her arms over her head. “Morning,” she mumbles as she stands up and goes to the bag of her clothes on the floor beside his bed.

“Morning,” he says, not meeting her eyes.

“How’d you sleep?” she says casually, noting that he turns around in order not to see her change.

“Perfectly.” But she can hear something in his voice, something strange and strained.

“Me too,” she says, and they walk out the door together for their morning meeting with Monty and Raven.

At first, there’s no retaliation from Bellamy. Until that night, when they’re sitting around the campfire, and he’s telling his stories, she feels him pull her closer.

It shouldn’t mess with her head: his arm around her, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on her bare shoulder. But it does.

She can barely pay attention to the story he’s telling—probably about the Trojan War or some shit—and she’s praying that he thinks that her blush is from the heat of the fire and nothing else. She listens to his voice, the way it rumbles in his chest, but she doesn’t quite hear the words. She feels stupid for giving into this, for feeling her eyes flutter closed, for letting herself believe that any of this is real.

And it makes her furious all over again.

Not backing down, she still sleeps closer to him that night. But the next morning, she wakes up half on top of him, her arm thrown across his chest. This time she doesn’t wait for him to get up, in fear that he’ll be the one to see her flustered.

After a week of this, she just wants him to admit that this is about more than making everyone else think that they’re dating. She wants him to tear down his walls, to _give in_.

This whole thing has made her contemplate their friendship, or whatever they are. Back when she first told him what she’d overheard at the lake, he said, “What we are or are not to each other is none of their business.” She almost wants to ask him now: _what am I to you?_

She turns it over in her head as she’s trying to do inventory in the med tent.

She thinks that they’re friends. For months, they’ve been leading this camp together, leaning on each other whenever they need to. But that word that Bellamy used the other night— _professional_ —stuck with her. There is always an element of business to things, of putting the camp above themselves. 

Maybe Bellamy has put the hundred before their relationship too, before his own feelings. Clarke can’t count the number of times over the past few months she’s had to remind herself that the kids need her and Bellamy to be good leaders more than she needs Bellamy. But she _needs_ Bellamy. The past few days of pretending in front of everyone have shown her that.

A rustle of the tent’s fabric door separates her from her thoughts. She looks up to see Bellamy in front of her.

“A grounder messenger just came back with Anya’s answer,” he says. “She expects us to meet her in TonDC in two days.”

“You mean, she expects _me_.”

Bellamy gives her a weird look. “Yeah, but I’m going with you.”

She sighs and places a roll of bandages into a pile on the shelf of supplies she’d been sorting. “No. You should stay here with the camp.” She turns to face him and leans against the shelf, her arms crossed. “You said it yourself—the last thing we should do right now is make the mistake of trusting anybody too much.”

He shakes his head, as though in defeat. He sees her point, but she can tell that he wants to argue a little more. He sits across from her on an empty cot. “You said that you didn’t think that Anya was planning to attack us.”

“And you said that I had too much faith in her. We should treat this meeting as something that can go wrong. If it does, you need to be here to ready the camp for battle.”

He’s leveraging his foot against the lower railing of the cot, bouncing his leg up and down: a nervous tic that she’s noticed before.. “You’ll take a team for backup.”

“I will,” she assures him.

“You’ll leave as soon as things seem off.”

“I will, Bellamy.”

They leave camp on a rainy April morning. Clarke is taking Lincoln and two gunners, hoping against hope that she won’t need them.

Bellamy hugs her fiercely before she goes, whispering, “Come back soon,” in her ear, just for her.

She pulls back and meets his eyes. “I will.”

He nods, like he’s trying to convince himself.

She feels that their little game is on pause, and she wants to tell him now, that she really does care for him, and that she wants him more than she could ever say. But the words get stuck in her throat, fearing rejection. She senses eyes on them, watching them say goodbye. This is why it hurts: he belongs to her in everyone’s eyes but his own.

This time when he kisses her, it’s on her lips. It makes her head spin. It’s hard and fast like he’s afraid that he’ll lose his nerve, like he’s afraid that she won’t come back.

And for a long time, she doesn’t.

Anya didn’t send the messenger; a different general did. They don’t tell her what happened to Anya, only that she was replaced by a burly man who takes Clarke and her party captive with no warning. She yells out for the gunners not to shoot, knowing that they’ll all be killed if they do, so they give up their guns and they’re led into the basement of an old building.

“It was you who burned 300 of our warriors alive,” says the new general as they’re being chained to the floor.

“We’ve already sorted this out with Anya. We made a treaty.”

“Well, Anya’s gone. And I’ve been waiting months to get a promotion so I could have more of a say in how we punish a war criminal.”

“A war criminal?” Lincoln chimes in, standing up, pulling on his chains. “You attacked a bunch of helpless kids who had nowhere else to go. There was no way they’d win, and you knew that.”

“Shut up, traitor.”

“We’re trying to get out of your hair,” Clarke says, grasping at straws. “We came here to talk to Anya about drawing up an agreement that allows us to leave your territory and find land of our own.”

The general smirks. “Sure, maybe. After we kill you.”

“No!” Lincoln yells.

“Give us a few days to figure something out, _please_. If you kill me, my people will retaliate.” That’s what she gets for leaving Bellamy as their sole leader, but at least she can use this. “And we have more weapons now.”

“She isn’t lying,” Lincoln says. “I’ve seen them myself.”

The general’s lip curls, but she can tell that she’s caught his attention. “Fine.” He looks to the other grounder soldiers. “Unchain everyone but the girl. Send them back to their camp.”

_What is he doing?_

He addresses Lincoln and the two gunners. “Tell your people that they have one week to give up their weapons and deliver them here, or I kill the girl.”

And then Clarke is alone.

The hours pass like grains of sand through an hourglass: slow, painful, and lonely. She sleeps on the floor of her cell, uses the chamber pot in the corner, and eats whatever scraps they bring down for her.

She wishes that she could go home. She prays that Bellamy won’t give up their weapons.

She should have known that he would. Of course he would.

On the seventh day the general comes down holding a key. The shackles fall from her wrists, leaving angry red marks on her skin as the only evidence of her imprisonment. 

“Are you about to kill me?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

He shakes his head. “Your people wait above.”

Two soldiers grab her by the arms and drag her up the steps, into the ground floor of the building and then out the door, onto the town road. 

The sun blinds her after a week of almost-darkness, so her eyes process the person in front of her in stages. First, she notices his stature, the outline of his confident stance, a blur of dark brown curls on his head. Then she blinks and sees his fingers tapping on the rifle in his hands, the frown on his face. And then she sees his eyes, watches them meet hers, sees them widen. She sees his lips part.

Then she takes in the people with him: her people, all of them. Each of them is carrying a gun in hand. She’s confused. Are they attacking or giving up the guns?

“Don’t do it, Bellamy,” Clarke hears herself say, not sure which scenario she’s warning against. She wants to run to him, to feel his arms go around her and know that she’s safe again, but this deal isn’t yet done. It _can’t_ be done.

He ignores her, addressing the general instead. “You said she wouldn’t be harmed.” His gaze has drifted to the marks on her wrists.

“She’s alive, isn’t she?” the general says shortly. “Leave the guns in there.” He gestures behind him to the empty building.

“Don’t,” Clarke says again, but Bellamy is removing the rifle’s strap from his shoulders.

He nods to Harper beside him, who leads the others past Clarke to drop their guns and the crates of extras on the floor of the room behind her. 

Once they’ve all rejoined Bellamy and Miller, the general nods to the two soldiers holding Clarke, who let her go. She walks forward and stands next to Bellamy, not wanting to give the grounders who held her captive the satisfaction of seeing her collapse into his arms like she wants to.

“And we get to leave,” Bellamy says.

“Yes,” the general says. “The commander will tell the southern clans to let you travel peacefully through their territory. Make sure you settle far from any land over which the commander rules. And never bother us again.”

“Don’t worry,” Bellamy says, and Clarke can hear the rage simmering just under his voice. “We won’t.”

The walk back to camp is long, but Clarke refuses to stop. She just wants to get back to camp, eat some real food, take a bath, and fall asleep. She doesn’t think about the fact that whenever she pictured home this past week, she thought of Bellamy’s tent, his bed. 

He’s mostly silent on their walk back. About two hours in, Clarke trips over an exposed root and when he grabs her hand to keep her from falling, he keeps holding it. 

_I give up_ , Clarke wants to say, unbelievably tired. _You win. Can we stop playing, now?_

But she doesn’t want him to let go of her, so she stays quiet. She doesn’t want to pretend anymore, but pretending is better than nothing.

Finally, they’re back in camp. Raven and Octavia are on her right away, wrapping her in their arms and walking her over to the fire, where they’ve been making stew. Clarke accepts the food, the comfort.

Then Raven and Octavia take her to the lake, where they help her scrub away all of the filth of the past week.

“You guys shouldn’t have given up the weapons,” Clarke says to them as they pour water over her hair.

“I didn’t want to,” Raven says. “I told Bellamy that you wouldn’t want us to be powerless, that you would want us to find another way. But the vote was half and half, and Bellamy didn’t want to risk your life. So he ended up finding a way for us to still get something out of it. Go to the village fully armed, ready for battle. And then threaten to attack if they don’t let us leave. It worked.”

It is with wet hair and new, clean-smelling clothes that Clarke returns to Bellamy’s tent, nearly dead on her feet.

She isn’t prepared when Bellamy throws his arms around her, crushing her to his chest.

“Oh—hi,” she mumbles into his shirt, her arms coming up to wrap around his back.

“I thought they would kill you.” His face is buried in her hair, his voice tremulous.

“I’m okay.”

She lets him hold her for as long as he needs to, until he pulls away, cheeks flushed, rubbing the back of his neck.

“You shouldn’t have traded all of our guns for me,” Clarke says. “That was a dumb move.”

He’s looking at her, smiling a little bit. She watches as he reaches for the hem of his shirt and lifts it up. There, tucked into the waistline of his pants, is the handgun he’s had since they landed.

She pushes his arm. “Don’t look so smug. That won’t do anything in a grounder attack.”

“That’s not all.”

“What do you mean?”

“As soon as Lincoln and the others came back with the message, I sent teams out to that bunker we were talking about. They came back yesterday. It’s an underground armory, Clarke. And it’s south of here, on our way to our new life.”

She hugs him again. “That’s amazing!”

“Yeah.” He pulls away to look at her, to tuck a stray hair behind her ear. “It didn’t matter though. Even if they’d come back and told me there was nothing down there, I would have made the same decision.”

“Bellamy—”

“Because I’d be a shit leader without you, Clarke.” He cups her cheek, brushing a reverent finger across her skin there. “Because I care about you more than I should. And because the whole time you were gone, all I could think about was how much I loved pretending to date you until you could have died thinking it was just a game to me.”

“You made me feel so _stupid_ ,” Clarke says, gripping his arm tightly, still needing to be mad at him even though he just told her everything she’s ever wanted to hear.

His brown eyes are wide and regretful, staring into her own with all the words he should have said much earlier. “I know. I should have just told you how I felt.”

She nods. “And I should have told you.”

When she kisses him, it’s away from the eyes of all the people who made them pretenders, with his lips smiling against hers alone in their tent, where he lifts her up in his arms and carries her to bed. It’s with intermittent laughter at how stupid they’ve been, at how relieved they are to be finally with each other unguarded.

In the morning when she wakes up, she lets herself stare at his sleeping form, his parted lips, his messy hair, and imagines a future in a permanent home that they share, in a permanent place that they built.

And months later, they find it in a town remarkably preserved, in frames of brick buildings still standing after hundreds of years, on the grassy meadows, in the crumbling library and the bell tower. Clarke watches her people settle into the cracks in the brick roads and make old spaces into new homes.

She and Bellamy never tell them that they weren’t together all those years ago when Clarke stumbled upon Harper and Fox’s conversation by the river. It stays their little secret, secure within the walls of their fixed-up home, a story to tell their children when they’re old enough to understand what it’s like to love someone with your walls still up.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (i love how i said that these oneshots would be between 1500 and 2000 words and so far they've been 3000-5000 words)
> 
> (i've been feeling really discouraged with life and writing lately so some comments might be nice)
> 
> (love y'all)


	3. it is well | (married fluff)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clarke reflects on her life with bellamy and finds that she's happier than she ever thought possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is for ashley (morleysbubbles on tumblr and twitter) who requested married/family fluff!
> 
> this oneshot is a vague continuation of the one before it if you want to see it in that way. "it is well" is originally from a hymn but i took it from toulouse's song with that title, which you should definitely listen to.

Three years ago, they got married in the sunken meadow that rests in the center of their growing settlement. It seemed such a small thing: a ceremony with vows and rings. Clarke didn’t think that she needed any of it in order to call Bellamy hers. But Bellamy just kept talking about Monty and Miller’s wedding until Clarke took the hint.

“It’s a way to celebrate with everyone we love,” Bellamy would say, followed by, “And you love any excuse to drink moonshine and dance all night.”

“Okay, we’ll get married,” she said one morning over breakfast in the Big House, and by that night the entire village was buzzing with the news.

Now Clarke is sitting in her chair by the window, watching Bellamy balance their daughter on his hip, and she feels at peace.

She watches and remembers how Bellamy first took her walking one day through the old, barely-standing town. It was soon after they had arrived in the town. Clarke remembers that day, when they came to a stop in front of the skeleton of the big brick building and the meadow, and Bellamy had looked at Clarke with eyes that said, _This is our place_.

Days later, Bellamy noticed that Clarke was frustrated one morning, uninspired. “Do you want to go on a date?” he asked.

He took her on a walk through the town, and together, building by building, they imagined. “This could be an infirmary,” Clarke said about a surprisingly sturdy structure that might have once been a bookstore, judging by all of the shelves and remnants of forgotten spines. After walking around the two above-ground floors, they ventured down to the basement, and Bellamy’s eyes lit up like a bright, stunning dawn.

Textbooks. This is where the people who lived here before the bombs had kept the textbooks. And most of them were still intact. Bellamy poured over them for at least an hour, chatting Clarke’s ear off about all of the words they now had, all of the knowledge that once was lost that was now at their fingertips.

“Bellamy,” Clarke said as her eyes skimmed the English section seeking anything by Toni Morrison or Kazuo Ishiguro, both authors she’d loved reading in the Ark databases. “I think this used to be a university.”

It was then that Clarke first pictured their future together. Before, it had seemed like a distant dream but in that basement, it came to her in glittering images. She saw Bellamy reading to their children. She saw him, down the road, opening a school in one of the many buildings they would fix up in the coming years.

As they continued walking through town that day, the past and future blended together in Clarke’s mind. She didn’t just see spaces where people _used_ to gather, where people _used_ to grab coffee in between classes or unwind with a beer and a pack of friends at the bar; she saw spaces where people would one day do the same things.

Before they moved, her life took place day to day, hour to hour. It was a constant game of catch-up, of anticipating the next danger, the next catastrophe waiting at their door. Walking through _their_ place, hand in hand with Bellamy, was the first time she had a chance to breathe. And with every breath, more daydreams and visions of the future took form in her mind.

Now, Clarke walks out the door with him and their daughter, onto the gravel road, where their people are coming awake and coming to life.

 _Hello_ ’s and _good morning_ ’s are called out to them as they walk, and they have to dodge Harper, who’s running with a big box of apples toward the kitchens.

“You’re playing tonight, right?” she calls out to Bellamy, referring to the soccer tournament they’re going to have in the meadow.

“Of course,” he calls back, but Harper is already far gone, in a hurry.

But it’s a pleasant hurry, a hurry that would have no consequences if it were to slow down. A hurry of choice, of morning excitement for the day.

Of course, this new place hasn’t been without hardship. The first winter, they nearly ran out of food. They all slept in the Big House because it was the only structure they had managed to restore to a fully-functioning building before the cold hit.

They lit every fireplace, huddled together under blankets every night. A lot of people got sick because they were weak, so Clarke would come home every night dragging her feet, her own body tired, hungry, and cold. They were farther south now, so it more rained than snowed. It was a difference of mere degrees, so it didn’t make the cold any more bearable, and if anything, Clarke would have taken the snow because at least the beauty of it boosted morale.

But then it happened. One day, new year’s eve, the sky finally opened up and gave them beauty.

She was in the infirmary treating patients with the flu, having just recovered from it herself, when she saw the first flakes fall. Despite the lingering fatigue in her limbs and the dozen patients she had demanding her attention, she gazed out the window for several minutes, smiling. She wondered if Bellamy and his construction crew would go inside for the day. She wondered at the little flakes falling onto the brick wall outside.

When she walked to the meadow, having left Monty to look after the sick, dusk was falling and the snow was nearly up to her shins.

And even though she was nearly dead on her feet, a smile invaded her face when she came to the meadow. Her people were running and laughing, tackling each other and throwing snowballs. Joy bubbled like warmth in her chest.

“Clarke, move!” Bellamy called out, and it was her only warning before a snowball hit her arm.

“Bellamy!” she cried indignantly.

He ran up to her, kissing her lips in apology. “You were in my line of fire.” Just then, a packed ball of snow hit the side of Bellamy’s face. Clarke looked over and saw Jasper, who was wearing a gloating smile.

She sighed, helping Bellamy wipe the snow off his face.

He smiled at her gratefully, then asked, “Are you feeling strong enough to play?”

Her immediate thought was no, but he looked so happy for the first time in months. “I don’t know…”

“You can be on my team. I’ll cover you.”

“We really shouldn’t be getting our clothes wet like this.” But really, Clarke wanted to be convinced.

“Raven already has the fires going inside.”

She pretended to think about it. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”

They ran and laughed until Clarke could barely stand, but it was a good kind of tired, the kind of tired that comes after fun with friends, the kind of tired that makes you dizzy in a good way, almost drunk on it.

Once it was full dark they retreated into the Big House, stripping off wet outer layers, leaving them to dry on the rafters, and huddling with warm broth by the fire.

The room was full of bed frames they’d found in surrounding buildings that used to be dorms and mattresses they’d been making by stuffing straw and feathers into sacks of woven fabric scraps. But right now they all sat in chairs or on the floor to be as close as possible to the fire’s warmth and to each other.

Still shaking from the cold or maybe from pure adrenaline, Clarke sat in between Bellamy’s legs, leaning her back against his chest as his arm went around her. The other held a cup of broth that they shared, savoring every sip.

They’d found the remains of a guitar in an old dorm room, and Miller had been fixing it and tuning it for weeks. That night, he brought it out for its debut, playing an upbeat song while Raven drummed along on an overturned bucket. Fox sang along once she recognized the tune as an old work song from the Ark, and soon everyone was clapping and singing.

As the night wore on, the mood softened and so did the music, until it was just Fox singing a slow, peaceful lullabye.

Clarke had dozed off when she woke to feel Bellamy lifting her into his arms and carrying her to their bed.

Right before sleep took her again, she felt a kiss against her forehead and a soft, “I love you” against her ear.

Now, on the steps of the infirmary, Bellamy kisses her forehead and tells her the same words, the words she’s gotten to hear from him every day for the past five years. She knows that she’ll see him and their daughter at lunch in the Big House, and then again at dinner, and that tonight they’ll laugh and sing with their friends before going to bed.

After being spat down from the sky by people who were supposed to care for them and struggling to survive in a hostile world, the earth had finally opened her arms to them and given them a good life. She used to think that life was supposed to be getting through the day, fighting tooth and nail to survive until the next sunset, but she was wrong. Life is supposed to be soft, and full of sunlight, and good.

Their world has been destroyed, and they have had to pick up the pieces. They have been stabbed and tested and broken and bruised. But everything's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have two more requests to get through, but those won't be up until august because i'm doing camp nanowrimo for my novel this month, and i'm not feeling too great about bellarke anyway rn and think i need a break.
> 
> i'll take this as an opportunity to announce that "slippin' through dreamland like a tourist" is now only one part and "i know what we need" is now discontinued indefinitely. sorry, i really need to not write for this ship anymore and take this horrible season as a sign to focus on my own original work. i hope y'all understand.
> 
> hope you liked this oneshot! don't forget to leave a kudo or a comment on your way out if you want!

**Author's Note:**

> as always, you can find me [on tumblr](https://mermaeids.tumblr.com) and [on twitter](https://twitter.com/mermaeids)


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